It has been another very busy week here at PCAU. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Jinja with Mark and Rose meeting children and guardians. We were able to visit four schools and do three home visits. We also held a meeting and talked with all of the guardians just like we did in Hoima last week.

For the guardians meeting, we had nine of eleven show up, so it was a pretty successful turnout considering how far some have to travel to get to the meeting. We were able to discuss responsibilities and roles with them and also get updated contact information. As far as my role in the meeting, I was able to gather enough information to complete more family trees for the children in our program.

For one of the home visits, we were on our way back from visiting the school of a child in the RTH program and we decided to stop and check on his mother. I was so glad that we did this because we discussed the child’s ability to be distracted with his headmaster at school, and now I can easily understand why. His mother has extremely low mobility and lives in a tiny one room home that was built for her by Rays of Hope Hospice Jinja. Her sister lives with her to help take care of her, but she is very unwell.  We were only able to stop in for a moment, but those few minutes helped me better understand the situation and gave me some context in the life of the child.

On Wednesday after we completed our visits, I was dropped off at a little Jinja hotel by our PCAU driver, Ronald. I stayed there for the night and had such great internet connection, that I was able to facetime some of my friends and family for the first time since I arrived in Uganda. It was so great to be able to share stories of the things that I have done here, especially after the emotional visits with the children that I had had earlier that day and the day before. There was also a cute little restaurant in the hotel lobby, so I settled in, had some dinner, and did some RTH documentation and final presentation work on my computer.  I got up early the next morning to go whitewater rafting on the Nile. I had been rafting before and found it a little boring, but let me tell you, this was much more intense than I thought I was signing up for. However, it was a great experience and I am so glad that I was able to fit that into my time here. I wish that I was able to attach a photo, but I have not received any from the company yet.

I got home late last night and was greeted so energetically by the kids in my compound. It will be so hard for me to leave them after how much time we have spent together.

This weekend is my last weekend in Uganda and I am not sure what I will do with my time yet. I hope to find something that will serve as a way to wrap up my trip. It has gone way too fast, but I am excited to see my family in another week!